Finding recipes is the mark of a dedicated collector--beyond dutifully ticking off achievements and diligently doing tasks simply for points. You are solely responsible for setting your collecting pace; the freedom can be frustrating at times, but exhilarating when you've finished a subset of recipes and feel like you've solved part of a large jigsaw puzzle, hunting down recipes from obscure instances and reputations. It's fun to chase down patterns across Azeroth, when so many achievements and quests are now straightforward. Plus, you may even find generous twinks willing to tip hundreds of gold for obscure recipes!

I began to collect recipes seriously during the dog-days of ICC. I rolled a priest to learn inscription techniques and tailoring patterns, as well as a deathknight to learn most blacksmithing. I began to care more about enchanting on my rogue, finished up most engineering schematics on my warlock, and hoped for transmute discoveries again on my alt rogue. For obscure reasons, Jewelcrafting and Leatherworking have never held a particular charm--perhaps it's because I rolled these professions purely for raid benefits and blithely unlearned them to pick up Tailoring and Engineering mounts.

It's been over a year, and I'm still rounding these collections out. I really enjoyed figuring out what Burning Crusade reputations my then-fresh 85 needed to grind out for a pattern, or what vanilla boss needed to be soloed. Since the project has started, there's been raid progression and achievement-hunting taking priority at points, but it's always been fun to return to. Ackis Recipe List is a great mod to use to track down all recipes and their methods of acquisition. Our own Wowhead profiler also keeps track of your recipes as well.

In the following tabs, I'll highlight some of the quirky patterns, collection methods, and achievements for each profession. We've recently updated our profession pages to cover the practicalities of each profession, so check back there for the profession trainers and other nuts and bolts!

Alchemy

Alchemists can create numerous potions and elixirs, as well as transmuting elements and gems. There are numerous world drops, recipes from unique vendors, rewards for reputation grinds, as well as discoveries learnt while creating other items.

Discoveries are one way to learn many recipes. In the process of making other items, you'll have a small chance to learn new recipes.BC-era resistance cauldrons are discovered through making individual Major Protection Potions, which are mostly mob-specific drops.

The remaining BC-era transmutes, flasks, and potions are discovered through making any type of BC-era item (speculation is that it's been changed so that discoveries favor the type of item you are crafting).

Blacksmithing

Blacksmiths mainly craft plate armor as well as Ebonsteel Belt Buckles. Collecting Blacksmithing recipes is a difficult process as you will be trying to find plans itemized for tanks, dps, and healers. There used to be crafting specializations (e.g. Weaponsmith, Armorsmith) allowing players to learn a handful of plans--this has been removed but it's still buggy as players can't learn the opposing specialization's patterns. Of course, there's many patterns available via reputation as well. Blacksmithing is already difficult to level, so good luck if you want to be a completionist!

Besides trainers, a good chunk of recipes can be gotten by turning in Cata-level bars to Blacksmithing suppliers in major cities.

Enchanting

Enchanting allows players to disenchant items, create enchants, and enchant their rings with special stat boosts. There's also fun items like Magic Lamp! As expansions have gone by, the means to collecting these formulae have simplified but some vanilla and BC-era formulae will prove tricky to find. Many Wrath formulae can be purchased from Vanessa Sellers for Wrath-era shards, and Cata formulae for Heavenly Shards and Maelstrom Crystals.

Engineering

Engineering provides all sorts of bombs, goggles, gadgets, and fun flavor items. Engineers were in high demand to craft epic ammunition in past expansions, but that's been removed. There are two types of Engineering specializations: Gnomish and Goblin. You will not be able to retain knowledge of one specialization's schematic if you swap, so choose wisely if you're after a particular silly item.

Sunwell Plateau has a series of BoE engineering goggles, which allow players to upgrade their BC-era epic goggles. The drop rate is pretty tiny though.

There used to be engineering huts tucked away in corners of Azshara, The Hinterlands, and Stranglethorn Vale; the vendors sold unique limited schematics. The one in Azshara is now removed, but those schematics are now available from trainers and the other huts remain in Cataclysm.

In previous expansions, Alliance and Horde needed to trade Schematic: Blue Firework and Schematic: Red Firework via the neutral AH, as faction-changing would automatically change the color of the firework. Now, goblin Buckslappy is happy to sell you all types of fireworks--of course on a limited timer.

Inscription

Inscription is a fairly straightforward profession for collectors. Make sure to do and daily while scouring the AH for Book of Glyph Mastery. These books should have been phased out in 4.2, but it currently remains that some recipes are only learnt via them.

Jewelcrafting

Jewelcrafting, added in TBC, mostly provides players with gems, necks, and rings. Perks for Jewelcrafters include special BoP gems with increased stats, as well as BoP starter trinkets. There are an endless amount of patterns to be gotten from vendors, doing dailies, and redeeming tokens for Wrath and Cata recipes, in addition to checking the AH for BoE patterns. There's also some strange lower-level patterns and more interesting ways to collect TBC patterns.

New to Cataclysm are several Vanity Monocles, which are BoE world drops. These can fetch a hefty price on the Auction House.

At 350, players can learn how to craft several focusing lens, items which create a neon line between the player and the target.

Jewelcrafters can now directly purchase or discover designs from Tome of Burning Jewels for cutting epic gems.

Leatherworking

Leatherworking provides leather and mail armor to dps and healers, as well as special leg and bracer enchants for crafters (and Pattern: Comfortable Insoles). There are numerous patterns to be collected, as the profession covers two armor types. Cata-level recipes require Heavy Savage Leather to purchase from special vendors in Twilight Highlands and capital cities, Braeg Stoutbeard sells Wrath-level patterns, and there's many patterns from reputation. There used to be three different types of Leatherworking specializations, but they have been removed and their patterns trainable from regular Leatherworking trainers (unlike the Blacksmithing glitch).

There are a number of BoP patterns from Outlands instances--both normal and heroic. Remember that the ones from Kael are also world BoE drops. Pattern: Arcanoweave Robe is pretty easy to farm from Mechanar and is one of the nicest robes in the game.

The contents of Knot Thimblejack's Cache are now removed from the game, with the changes to Dire Maul. You can't learn how to make Gordok Ogre Suit anymore as well--you can just acquire them from a repeatable quest. However, as the epic patterns are BoE, you may get lucky and find some remaining on the AH. Pattern: Shadoweave Mask, from a removed quest in Searing Gorge, is also available via the AH as it is BoE.

There are several shirts around Northrend that only tailors can loot, but they are BoE so can also be placed on the AH.

Secondary Professions

Secondary professions are: Archaeology, Cooking, First Aid, Fishing. Characters can maximize all of these professions concurrently. Unlike primary professions, secondary professions do not come with built-in stat boosts to your character, but they are very practical. For example, you can, with the right level Cooking, make your own buff food instead of going broke at the Auction House. (Or, secondary professions like Archaeology may seem like a lesson in futility.) If you max out all secondary professions to 525, you earn More Skills to Pay the Bills, but there's much more fun to be had.

Archaeology

Archaeology is a new secondary profession added in Cataclysm. The purpose of archaeology is to unearth fragments from the past, piecing them together to form artifacts. You'll do so by flying to specific digsites, discovering 3-6 fragments per node, and solving when you've accumulated enough fragments and keystones (roughly 30 per common artifact, 100+ for rares and epics.) Some solves vend for hundreds of gold, while others turn into BoA ilvl 359 epics. Other times, you can go hours finding annoying digsites and solving artifacts that vend for . Regardless of what you solve, at first it's a fun way to learn more about Azeroth's lore since all artifacts, found in the Archaeology spellbook, have an entry with fun flavor text.

As you solve more rare and epic artifacts, you'll work towards It Belongs in a Museum!, which grants the title "Professor." There are currently over 30 rare artifacts, so you should be able to reach this with some diligence and luck. Definitely a favorite title of many disgruntled graduate students.

Cooking

Cooking serves a practical purpose; it provides your toon with all sorts of buff food, useful for raiding as well as questing. However, just like any food store, there's a gourmet section of odd things you can acquire from "mood" food to an array of alcohol.

Completing the Cooking meta-achievement, Hail to the Chef, will reward you with the title "Chef."

Recipe: Thistle Tea and Recipe: Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops are no longer obtainable by new players. Thistle Tea is available to rogues, but very early in Vanilla, all classes could purchase a BoE version. There's still a few floating around, so it doesn't hurt to look. As for the Chops, the recipe was one reward from an epic questline tied to the opening of the AQ gates, now removed in Cataclysm.

Fishing

Just as in real life, Fishing is a relaxing profession with a sense of the unexpected--you could find a great catch, discover treasure, or return home empty-handed. While some fish are required for practical in-game food, there are numerous items from Fishing that are purely vanity status items, like Dustbringer.

Completing the fishing meta grants Accomplished Angler and the funny title "Salty." This meta will require a good deal of patience.

The Kalu'ak Fishing Derby is held every Saturday at 2pm, awarding either Dread Pirate Ring or Boots of the Bay to the first player to redeem Blacktip Shark, fished from any pool in Northrend that contains Pygmy Suckerfish. This contest generally is finished in about 6 minutes. Find a place that has several nearby pools (I won this by the pool near Fort Wildevar) and turn your graphics settings down so Dalaran loads quickly when you hearth back.

Dust, Dust, and More Dust! has been changed recently to allow items disenchanted via the loot roll box to count towards the total. Tell your guildmates to send all their BoE greens to an enchanter instead of vending them while leveling to speed this up.

Gemcrafter Extraordinaire requires the guild to cut 2,500 gems of at least superior quality. This literally does mean any superior-quality gem--gems from Outlands and Wrath will count towards this, even though they have less stats than a Cataclysm green gem.

Mighty Miners requires the guild to mine 50,000 rocks and ore, down from 100,000 in early Cataclysm.

Making History requires guildmates to complete 500 Archaeology solves. This is incredibly easy--a few people leveling the profession should take care of it.

Skinnin' for a Livin' requires the guild to skin 50,000 creatures, which is a large amount. However, with the demand for Pristine Hide in Firelands craftables, progress should be made on this achievement. Try areas like Tol Barad and unphased Sethria's Roost for easy leather.

The Pen is Mightier requires the guild to make 2,500 glyphs. With glyphs now permanently learnt, the market has slowed down a bit, but at least it doesn't require 25,000 anymore.

Well, that should certainly keep you collecting for a while! Again, this isn't meant to provide a source of easy gold, but it's a nice change of pace from raiding or concrete achievement-chasing. You might learn something new along the way or discover that you've got a discontinued pattern on your hands. Either way, happy farming!

With new rewards for obtaining 100, 125, and 150 pets in 4.2, there’s been a lot of talk on how to get those few remaining elusive pets. Many players stopped after collecting 75, as there were no more incentives. Well, in 4.2 there are three new pet rewards as shown in our video last week, as well as several more from Firelands, so it’s time to start collecting again. (Edit: We've updated the guide for 4.3 and there are even more with the Darkmoon Faire.) Some pets are easily obtainable from questing, vendors, and achievements. Others may take some time and luck to farm up. We've got it all organized and covered for you though, so you should be able to get 150 pets easily!

Here’s a complete list of pet companions one can obtain. As you can see, there’s a good deal more than the 150 needed, but some are no longer obtainable or cost money from the Trading Card Game. You can keep track of pets on our very own Character Profiler; Warcraft Pets is also a great resource, as well as in-game addons like Collectinator.

We've organized the pets by how you can obtain them: achievements, Argent Tournament, Hyjal, Blizzard, quests, guild perks, zone-specific drops, and more! With the addition of the Satchel of Exotic Mysteries and Call to Arms in PUGs, a fair number of pets can be obtained through this path as well--provided you get lucky, and can tank or heal.

From easy to difficult, there are achievements rewarding the player with cool pets. You get achievement points and vanity pets, what's not to love?

Turkey Cage is a reward for completing Pilgrim. This turkey runs towards the fire and cooks itself.

At the Argent Tournament in Icecrown, players complete daily quests to unlock rewards from their factions. When you become a Champion of a particular faction, you can purchase additional pets and mounts from that vendor. These pets are BoE and can be traded on the AH, as well as looted from the Satchel of Exotic Mysteries. There are several other pet rewards that are BoP from Tournament reputation.

Guardian Cub matches the Winged Guardian also sold by Blizzard. The catch is that the pet is BoE--it can be sold on the AH for some gold.

It's rewarding to finally obtain these pets, but they can be frustrating to farm with a 1/1000 droprate. If you're farming these, be sure to constantly check the Auction House as well.

Baby Raptors

Darting Hatchling is found in Dart's Nest, a randomly spawning nest in northern Dustwallow Marsh. It used to drop from Dart, a rare raptor, but this has been changed. This pet likes to run around and leave trails of dust. It's also found in the Satchel of Exotic Mysteries.

During the Midsummer Festival, players who battle Ahune receive a Satchel of Chilled Goods which has a small chance to contain Ice Chip. This pet, a mini-elemental, leaves an ice patch behind and randomly throws snowballs. In past years, Scorched Stone dropped from Ahune.

Joining a guild has numerous benefits; as your guild achieves higher levels, you can purchase some great rewards from guild vendors in Stormwind, Orgrimmar, and Dalaran, depending on your character's guild reputation.

Mining

Elementium Geode can be looted by miners from any Obsidium, Elementium, and Pyrite nodes.

Cataclysm has introduced a major revamp to a lot of leveling zones. You'll find the quest flow easier-to-follow, with well-itemized rewards and occasionally some fun items like these pets.

Jubling is obtained after completing Spawn of Jubjub at the Darkmoon Faire. You will need to obtain 2 Dark Iron Ale Mug from Blackrock Depths and throw them at Morja, an orc NPC working at the Faire. Her lost pet Jubjub will arrive and then she will give you the quest. Hold onto the resulting Unhatched Jubling Egg for a week and then Jubling will hatch!

If you’ve completed the major questchain in Northern Stranglethorn, you’ll be able to obtain Lashtail Hatchling in Zul’Gurub. Kidnapped by Bloodlord Mandokir, the raptor is overjoyed to see you upon killing Bloodlord. Complete An Old Friend to get your pet, who out of gratitude, takes your character’s name.

Miniwing is a reward for completing Skywing in Terokkar Forest, where you escort Skywing through a camp of hostile Arkoaa.

Mr. Grubbs is a reward you get while questing and looting mobs in Eastern Plaguelands. After you find Fiona’s first two travelling companions, you will be able to acquire Fiona's Lucky Charm, allowing you to loot Hidden Stash which can contain this pet.

Hippogryph Hatchling is a reward from the Thunderhead Hippogryph card in the Heroes of Azeroth series.

Rocket Chicken has noteworthy animations—the chicken hovers on its rockets, fires up into the air, and can explode into a cloud of feathers. This pet is from the Robotic Homing Chicken card from the March of the Legion series.

There are a ton of fun pets available from vendors--either for gold or for reputation-based tokens. Check our list of vendors before buying a pet on the AH--people like to buy obscure pets and sell them for much more.

Cat Carrier (White Kitten) is sold by Lil Timmy, who occasionally patrols around the Canals of Stormwind. He only sells one pet at a time, so consider yourself lucky to snag it. This can also drop from the Satchel of Exotic Mysteries.

Following this overview, you should be able to find pets you'd like to track down, with several to spare. It's trickier if you're a newer player, but with new pets being added every patch, you can do it!

This new dev watercooler blog covers casual content for 85s. As we've covered in recent posts, there's a ton of content to do even if you don't raid with Firelands coming out: dailies, epic questlines, new achievements and zones. Blizzard has created great quest hubs and events that tie into the current plotlines before--Isle of Quel'Danas, the war efforts for Ahn'Qiraj, the Argent Tournament dailies to name a few--and now we get to read a dev's perspective on Firelands.

As this is my first dev watercooler, I thought some introductions would be in order. I'm the lead quest designer for World of Warcraft, but many of you may already be familiar with my writing and webcomics under the pen-name "Fargo" from years past. To all my new and old friends: Hello! I hope to have the opportunity for more chats like this in between cramming our game full of epic experiences capable of melting your frontal lobes with pure liquefied awesome. (It says that on my business card.)

I'm 85. Now What?

World of Warcraft has a pretty big footprint: we try to create a world that appeals to casual and hardcore players alike. There's a whole body of players -- be they casual or solo gamers or serious gamers with time constraints -- who gravitate toward questing. It's the most accessible part of the game. Quests move you through cool locations, allow you to play through epic stories, and continually reward you without requiring a lot of practice or commitment. Not everyone has the time to raid, and not everyone wants to; for many players, quests are the whole game. A major thrust of the Cataclysm expansion, obviously, was to recreate much of the world to give players a more consistent, satisfying, epic questing experience as they level up.

But there's a problem with level-up questing, and it keeps me up at night. It has an end. When you hit max level, the rewards slow to a trickle. You don't get a comforting Ding! every couple of hours. You stop learning new abilities. From a solo progression standpoint, your character is in many ways “done,” and you turn your attention to the other parts of the game (like crafting.)

For many players, the end is just the beginning. We've done a lot to provide serious players with ongoing progression in the form of dungeons, raids, and accumulating high-end gear for fighting bosses or PvP. But what about the player who just wants to keep questing?

Keeping the Rewards Coming

In the absence of gaining levels, there are still ways to reward players who want to continue questing or playing through quest-like experiences. Here are some things (there may be more) that might encourage players like this to stick around:

Participation in an epic story

A sense of progress

Discovery of something new or unexpected each day

Earning character customization (including cool mounts!)

Earning fun toys

Making your character more powerful

I didn't list gold as a reward, because even though it's fun to hoard gold, the usual reason you want to do so is for one of the reasons listed above. I also hesitated to add “making your character more powerful” to the list. Even though it's fun and rewarding, I think it has a limit. It's mostly relevant only if you've got powerful stuff to fight. And if you're not interested in raids, getting powerful just for the sake of power isn't always compelling.

We've grappled with this problem before, and we'll continue to tinker with solutions. The Isle of Quel'Danas provided people with a great sense of progression, at least on a realm-wide level, and it sure felt epic. The Argent Tournament definitely gave players a sense of personal progress, as well as lots of fun toys.

But for patch 4.2, we really wanted to give players something. Something big!

Fight for the Firelands!

The Guardians of Hyjal are getting smart in patch 4.2. They're not just assaulting the Firelands with hardcore raiding guilds… they're attacking that place with everything they've got. That includes you, solo players! We've created a whole zone dedicated to daily questing. There are some 60 new quests in total -- that's about half a zone's worth of quest content. While the raiders are concentrating on taking down the likes of Ragnaros, you'll be securing the rest of his fiery domain.

There's also a story here, a chronicle of a vicious, knock-down, drag-out fight that begins in Hyjal and progresses -- over the course of weeks -- across the mountaintop and then into the Firelands themselves. Along the way, major characters are going to get rocked, you'll meet (and destroy) a few new villains, and you'll earn yourself a small heap of nice rewards. The druids are establishing a beachhead in a hostile world, starting with little more than a pile of rocks and ultimately erecting an enormous otherworldly base.

The progression is personal: you won’t see it happen until you make it happen.

We want to keep that sense of progression going, not just over the course of weeks but on a daily basis. As you begin to unlock and upgrade your hub in the Firelands, more quests will become available, and you’ll be able to slowly push your way forward every day. Extensive randomization means your quest flow will be a little different one day to the next. You’ll also have choices to make as to how the battle progresses.

The Firelands daily area hits a lot of the high points on my list above. And, for good measure, players can also earn a lot of gold and player-power enhancing items as well.

Beyond the Firelands...

Problem solved? Far from it -- to be clear, we don’t think the Firelands questing arc is "the answer." But I'll come out and say I think it's pretty sweet. I'd love to hear your feedback -- it's been up and running on the Public Test Realm for a couple of weeks now. Personally, I've fought my way into the Firelands and I'm nearly ready to select my first major upgrade to the quest hub… do I go with the Druids of the Talon or do I recruit the Shadow Wardens? Decisions, decisions! My choice will impact the next couple weeks of questing.

Still, we're building towards something, and we're constantly watching players to see what works and what doesn't. I can't wait to see the Guardians of Hyjal stage their assault on the live servers.

In the meantime, even as we speak, our Top Men and Women (and I want you to imagine that we're wearing lab coats) are scheming up ways to push these ideas even farther in future World of Warcraft updates. Players shouldn't feel like max level is the end of their experience. We want everyone to participate in something epic, no matter what their playstyle.

Dave "Fargo" Kosak is the lead quest designer for World of Warcraft. Each morning by the first light of dawn his forearms are ritually shaved, followed by twenty minutes of cardio on one of those playground spring-horses.

Pick Pocket, for the less-agile and uninitiated, is a unique ability allowing rogues in stealth to loot special items from hostile mobs without entering combat. If done sloppily, it can aggro mobs, annoy your party members, and make you look pretty clumsy. If done correctly (and with enough bag space), you can amass a collection of unique items, and if you’re lucky, some epics inside of a lockbox. There's a lot of mundane objects in the pockets of Azeroth, but one's trash is another's treasure--you might find something amusing like a trashy novel or loaded dice.

This is a guide using Wowhead's vast database to show you every fun item you can pickpocket in World of Warcraft. Either for vanity item collections or just to send your friend something fun, this list will help you rediscover Azeroth and more.

As many players hit level 85 and begin to queue for Heroic dungeons, there has been a resounding echo among the users of the official forums and pretty much everywhere else, all preaching a single thought: Heroic dungeons are too damn hard! Many of these players are skipping straight into Heroics as soon as their item level average permits, since (after all) this is the intended "ready" point for the content. But is it too low? Or are the Heroic themselves too difficult?

Today, Blizzard poster Zarhym responded to an angry poster, admitting that Wrath of the Lich King content was actually too easy and the Heroics are supposed to be as difficult and as much of a test of skill as they now are.

Players were conditioned at the end of Wrath of the Lich King to mow through Heroics at lightning speed. Not only were they too easy to begin with, by the time Dungeon Finder came out players greatly out-geared the majority of these dungeons.

The reality is that it makes sense for Heroics to be a true and necessary stepping stone into raiding. They are more difficult at the beginning of this expansion's lifespan than they were at the beginning of Lich King. We like it that way. We want you thinking and trying new approaches through trial and error in order to succeed, just as groups do while raiding.

As new tiers of gear are released and new raids open up, Heroics will naturally become easier, but that provides little good reason for trivializing them now. This is true even if some groups -- particularly pick-up groups -- lack the patience, will, or teamwork necessary to succeed.

We prefer that skill and character power provide the edge in Heroic dungeons, rather than supplying simple boss fights where mistakes are so easily forgivable.

Will it test you to play at your best and communicate effectively with your group? Certainly. Should Heroic dungeons be tuned down so failure is rarely a real possibility? That doesn't sound like interesting design to me, nor would it act as a good catalyst for compelling, strategic, and social gameplay.

...

You might have to spend more time in normal dungeons than you did before if you want a very relaxing dungeon experience right now, before you jump into Heroics determined to succeed with ease. The difficulty of this expansion is on a different level right now, but it's still nowhere near the gap between five-player dungeons and raiding which existed in the original release, and to a lesser extent The Burning Crusade.

If you expect a quick, mellow run through Heroic dungeons -- which provide quite powerful gear given we're on the first Cataclysm raid tier -- this early in the entire lifespan of this expansion, you might want to consider collecting items and gear via normal dungeons and other means before regularly hopping into the Heroic queue. They're not super-unfriendly toward casual players, but they do require casual players to exercise skill and proper social/leadership skills.

We all know that Heroics are supposed to be difficult, as this is the first tier of content prior to raiding and not the "farm status" content of yesteryear - I'm sure many of you noticed that the world has changed, and the content has changed with it. Personally, I'm not in the mindset that Heroics are "too hard" - but I can totally see where players are coming from, as many aspects of some Heroics can be a nightmare with anything other than a preformed group. Some fight mechanics and mob abilities are still extremely overtuned and are not so much challenges of skill but are more challenges of tolerance. I really wish that instead of generalizing the idea and braying that simply all Heroics are "too hard" that players would instead offer more constructive and specific feedback on the exact encounters and mechanics that supplement this belief.

Now, I'll admit that Heroics are definitely no longer the walk in the park that they used to. I can no longer constantly spend more time in a browser window outside of the game than healing players, and to be honest I don't miss that. I'm a pretty good healer, I have no problem doing Heroics in a guild group, but should I still be forced to spam heals on trash because half of them are randomly bleeding for 30k damage a second (I'm looking at you, Deadmines trash) before jumping into a room with one of the most joke boss encounters of the expansion? Maybe I just need to get out of the mindset that it's okay when trash is harder than bosses - not so "trash" anymore!

So here I am, writing a blog post when I should be studying for a chemistry and physics final for next week.

I've got a question for you all who go to school, or even those who go to work (wait, those things don't happen if you play WoW!): How do you balance WoW (or another video game of your choice) with the obligations you have in real life?

I'd like you to meet my good friend World of Warcraft. We've been friends for about two years now, off and on.

I could talk about all the positive qualities that my friend WoW has, that he's always available to hang out when I'm free, that he's got a bunch of other friends, invites me to parties, all those things.

More than anything though, I've always thought WoW was awesome because WoW wants me to succeed.

Their new editor, "Pwyff", writes a topic that has some striking similarities to the things we've been discussing here on the blog for the last week or so, so I thought I'd take a moment to point it out so as to add to the discussion. Feel free to post your comments and thoughts here, or in the comments thread on the story if you happen to have an Allakhazam account.

Just a short philosophical question for you today, with any luck the real action will be in the comments. :)

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine today, someone who just started playing recently. Her priest is somewhere in her thirties now, and she asked me a question that I had never really stopped to consider – one of those questions that must have an answer, if you could only put your finger on what it was.

ArgentSun posted a comment here a little while ago, and it started to get me thinking.

I love WoW. It's clearly the most successful video game ever made. It's a beautifully tailored, wonderfully epic experience, that gets better each time I look at it. But ArgentSun's comment made me realize that aside from all the things we love about WoW, as a game, it's completely schizophrenic.